Family members of some police officers, who were killed on duty in Lagos State, have cried out over the unpaid entitlements of their late breadwinners by police authorities.
The affected police officers were killed in operations by suspected armed robbers many years ago.
Inspector Taiye Ajetunmobi was slain in 2012, while Inspector Phillip Ekpe with force number AP/ 46945 was killed on March 11, 2007.
While Ajetunmobi had three wives and 10 children, Ekpe had only one wife and four children.
Ajetunmobi was killed while chasing some armed robbers in the Apapa area of Lagos. He had succeeded in the arrest of so many armed robbers while working under the Area ‘B’ Apapa Command.
He was chasing three suspected armed robbers on a motorcycle along with two other policemen, Wale and Abiola, around the Warehouse area of Apapa, when he met his tragic end.
The suspected robbers had negotiated a bend and laid ambush for the inspector and his team.
Immediately they negotiated the same bend, the suspected robbers shot Ajetunmobi on his forehead and he died instantly.
Wale was shot in the stomach and was rushed to the hospital, but he’s lucky to be alive to tell the story.
Miraculously, Abiola did not sustain any bullet wound during the incident.
The then Lagos State Commissioner of police, Mr. Umar Manko, who later retired as an Assistant Inspector General of Police, visited the Area ‘B’ Command and ordered that a minute silence be observed in honour of Ajetunmobi, who he described as a real hero in the force.
But many years after, the fallen hero’s family members are still waiting for his entitlement.
One of his wives, Modina, who spoke to our correspondent, said, “The police authorities have abandoned the Ajetunmobis. They did not compensate the family. We have tried to get the money, but they have not paid us till date. See me, we’re really suffering. Please, they should remember and pay us so that we will live better lives. My husband was a warrior and a hero, who fought against crime in Lagos very well. Please, the authorities should remember us.”
Inspector Ekpe’s wife, Koton, said the burden of raring her four children had become too heavy for her to bear alone any longer. She said he meagre income could no longer sustain them.
Narrating how her husband was killed while on duty, Koton said he was the commander of a team in a patrol vehicle, doing what they knew best, when, unknown to them, some people, who had parked a bus along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, close to the Guardian Newspapers premises, attacked them.
She said her husband and the other policemen saw the men and wanted to inquire what was wrong that they parked their vehicle along the road for such a long time. Without any warning, the suspected criminals opened fire on them.
Koton said her husband and another policeman were killed on the spot.
She claimed that after the incident, the police authorities only paid the family N500, 000 and had since then never cared to compensate them for her husband’s death.
The woman told our correspondent that she had wasted money travelling on several occasions to Abuja along with her first son, Samuel Ekpe, for her late husband’s entitlement, but she had yet to succeed.
She said police authorities only kept promising, but never fulfilled it.
Koton also accused the police authorities in Abuja of refusal to give her any phone number she could easily reach them on, instead of travelling that long distance every time, inspite of the risk involved in such a long journey.
She claimed that her husband’s entitlement should have been paid, latest, five years after he was killed, adding that the police authorities were aware that when a policeman died, his family members would be quickly ejected from the
barracks.
“The suffering is too much for me. To cater for these children is not an easy task, judging from the situation of things in the country. I’m appealing to the authorities to have mercy on us,” she
lamented.
